Well, ultra conservatively, Romney lost

It wasn’t a good night for alpha males and conservative tales.

Here in Massachusetts, a broad-shouldered, strapping ex-jock who drives a beat-up pickup truck lost his U.S. Senate seat to a bespectacled female college professor. Nationally, a tall, handsome business titan who sired five strong sons failed to defeat a big-eared, skinny black guy blessed with two lovely daughters.

Tuesday night, Mitt Romney walked away from the podium and departed the political stage after delivering a concession speech filled with resignation and regret, a speech he never expected to make because his party won’t accept that it’s out of touch and out of step with the mainstream.

Instead, the Republicans clung stubbornly to the past, while Mitt moved to the middle and shifted to the right. Like a Ken doll equipped with replaceable parts, he was at times Moderate Mitt, Manic Mitt, Mormon Mitt and Massachusetts Mitt. His shining moment came during the first debate, when he KO’d a sleeping president like a rock ’em, sock ’em robot and emerged as Mitt with Mettle. But he never evolved as a political force until it was too late, when a force of nature and a governor from New Jersey conspired to lop off his head, like a child grown sick of her Barbie.

Election night in America was a cluster of firsts. For the first time, same-sex marriage passed by popular vote at ballot boxes in Maine and Maryland. Wisconsin elected the first-ever openly gay or lesbian person to the U.S. Senate. The nation re-elected a president who favors marriage equality and the Bay State elected Elizabeth Warren, who withstood assaults on her claims of Indian heritage to become our state’s first female U.S. senator

In yet another example of a changing America, marijuana continues to emerge from a decades-long smokescreen of scare tactics and misinformation, when Colorado and Washington became the first states to legalize the production, sale and possession of recreational marijuana. In other words, residents no longer must feign Parkinson’s to smoke pot. Here in Massachusetts, meanwhile, we decided that sick people can get high, but they cannot die, at least not with dignity and by their own hand.

Tuesday night was also slashed with surreal images and evidence that the Grand Old Party still doesn’t get it. On Fox News, after it became clear that Barack Obama would prevail, Karl Rove continued to sputter that Ohio was not yet lost, despite all signs to the contrary. Pundits and those within the party pointed accusatory fingers, claiming Romney lost because of the hurricane, because of Chris Christie’s bluster, because of negative campaigning, because Romney wasn’t conservative enough and America wasn’t white enough. And up to the end, a shameless Dick Morris predicted a landslide win by the man who lost.

Now, amid the internal squabbling, we’ll see a fight for the very soul of a once-proud party. Years ago, in the good old days still craved by conservatives, Republicans touted small government and self reliance. It’s since been co-opted by religious fundamentalists and the militant tea party movement. Among them are the radicals who claim that Romney lost because he lacked ideological purity; in other words, he didn’t cotton to the idea that pregnancy from rape is a gift from God, that homosexuals are sexual deviants who don’t deserve “special rights,” and that politics should take a back seat to religion. (At least, we think he didn’t cotton to those ideas, although it was sometimes hard to tell).

After any election, the losing party must reassess and regroup. In September, tea party darling Laura Ingraham declared, “If you can’t beat Barack Obama with this record, then shut down the party. Shut it down. Start new, with new people.” For once, she happens to be right. In this case, it means that the party must purge extremists such as Rush Limbaugh, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum and, yes, Paul Ryan. It has to stop talking about “legitimate” rape and banning abortion. It must cease obsessing over sex and our lady parts.

Perhaps most important, it should loosen its death grip on a vision of a “traditional America” that was never perfect, and reach out to minorities and the working class. Despite Limbaugh’s obnoxious glee over Romney’s “47 percent” rant, voters cringed.

On a positive note, the long, seemingly endless political campaigning of 2012 has come to an end. And for everything that divided us, one viral video united us all in heartfelt, sympathetic agreement: Poor little Abigael can finally stop crying about “Bronco Bama and Mitt Romney,” because the election is now but a memory.